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well as its rights. I saw no village greens for outdoor sports and pastimes, and no village halls for concerts, readings and limelight entertainments during the long winter evenings. But it is not alone amusement that is lacking in the villages of Ireland. There is, in the vast majority of villages, a complete absence also of endowed village charities for the distribution of blankets, clothing, or food to the needy, and of village benefit clubs for the aid of members in times of sickness and death. I know well that excuses can be offered for this seeming neglect by the landed gentry of an obvious duty. The strained relations which, owing to unhappy but relentless historical and economic causes, existed for generations between the landlords and the agricultural classes were not calculated to encourage the gentry to embark on projects of social improvements. Then there is also the tendency of the peasantry, with their ingrained conservative instincts, to cling to old familiar habits and customs, and to receive with distrust and antipathy schemes for their improvement, which involve a change in their immediate surroundings.

But however the blame is to be apportioned, my friend, Tom Delany, knew no more of village charities or village clubs than he did of penny readings or magic lantern entertainments, and he was not a member of any insurance society. "No; I get no pay on days that I am sick any more than I do on wet days." "What do I do when I'm ill? I go to the dispensary doctor at the village for a bottle, if it's only a slight illness; but if it's a bad wan-the fever now-I go into the poorhouse. My life is not insured. Faith, I'm sure to be buried in any case; and I don't mind if I'm not put in 'the yallow hole' [the pauper burial-ground] over at the workhouse. If all goes to all, I'll get a coffin from the poorhouse

for nothin', and the neighbors will carry me on their shoulders to Knocklerien graveyard, where all my people are buried. The neighbors are very good-God bless them!-and if they have anything at all, they never allow a poor, unfortunate crathur to want a bit or a sup or a dacent buryin'."

I looked around the kitchen to see if I could discover what books and newspapers formed the literary recreation of Tom and his family. It was evident that the Weekly Freeman was subscribed to, for a portion of the walls was covered with the political cartoons of that journal. I also saw some copies of the Shamrock, a little story-paper published weekly in Dublin, and alsofor the daughter, probably-some numbers of a London penny weekly journal. There were a few books, stories evidently, much torn and dilapidated, and I noticed the "Dublin Songster" a collection of music-hall and patriotic songs and ballads, with a mixture of ditties popular some years ago.

And now comes the interesting question-"What does the Irish peasant read?" The Irish peasant by common consent possesses mental qualities of a high order. He is intelligent, quickwitted, and shrewd in his observations on men and things. These faculties are innate in him. He certainly does not owe them to reading. Sociability is a strong or should I say a weak?point in his character; and he loves to pick up his information, and sharpen his natural wits, in social intercourse. Nothing delights him more than a chat on current affairs at home and abroad with his fellows, in the smith's forge, or by the hearth of his cabin on a winter's evening, or reclining on a sunny bank on a Sunday after Mass, or at any time in the village public house over a pipe and a pint of porter. He will also listen with absorbed interest to the reading of a newspaper or the telling of old folk stories and legends

a popular pastime with the peasantsin these hours of ease. But it may be said as a general truth that he reads few books. The books I have seen in the houses of the agricultural laborers and small farmers in the south of Ireland were usually national works, issued at low prices, such as, "The Irish Penny Readings," containing admirable selections of prose and poetry by Irish writers; the lectures and sermons of Father Burke, the famous pulpit orator; and "The Story of Ireland," by A. M. Sullivan, the "Lives of the Saints," and other religious works; and a few of Lever's novels, such as "Charles O'Malley" and "Tom Burke of Ours" in a cheap form, may also be encountered. Books like these are eagerly read by the peasantry and they circulate from house to house in a parish until they fall to pieces from constant perusal. Song books, however, are most common. I have frequently seen "The Brian Boru Song Book," and "The Harp of Tara Song Book," each published at 3d. and containing very good selections from Moore's melodies and the national ballads and songs of the Young Ireland and Fenian movements.

But unquestionably the most popular form of Irish literature-by which I mean reading matter produced in Ireland-not only among the agricultural laborers, but among the farmers and the citizens in the towns, is the Dublin weekly newspaper. The Weekly Freeman, The Weekly Independent, The Weekly Nation (Nationalist organs); and The Weekly Irish Times (neutral, so far as politics are concerned), which supply literary matter, as well as the news of the week, circulate widely throughout the country. It is, however, from London rather than from Dublin that the people of Ireland now obtain the bulk of their reading matter. I have been amazed during recent visits to Ireland at the display of Lon

don penny weekly publications, such as Tit Bits, Answers, Home Chat, Pearson's Weekly, Woman's Life, in the newsagents' shops, in even the remote towns of Ireland, while Dublin publications of a somewhat similar kind, but supplying Irish verses, stories and historical sketches, such as The Shamrock, The Emerald and Irish Bits were difficult to obtain. I have seen the counters of newsagents in such towns as Waterford, Limerick, Tralee, Kilkenny, Galway-each feeding large agricultural districts-piled as thickly with as varied a collection of these London weekly journals as the counters of newsagents in Lambeth and Islington or any other populous district of the Metropolis in which these publications are produced. I was so impressed by this phenomenon that I endeavored, when in Dublin a short time ago, to obtain some accurate information in regard to its extent from Messrs. Eason, the principal Irish distributing firm. I was told that within the past ten years the circulation of these journals in Ireland has almost quadrupled, although the population has diminished within the same period by an eighth. Week after week enormous bundles of these journals are sent to all the chief towns and villages throughout the country; and I venture to say there is not a cabin in any part of Ireland-save perhaps the extreme west-in which there are boys and girls able to read-and, thanks to the National schools, illiteracy may be said to be unknown among the rising generation-in which copies of these journals will not be found.

We have here some indication of the immense influence for good or evil which the National system of education has exercised on the destiny of the country. I have often heard that system condemned, but I have never failed to stand up as well as I was able in its defence. It may not be the

ideal system of training the youth of the country-for one thing, the history of the country has hitherto been stupidly debarred in its curriculum, but when I point out that, whereas in 1841 fifty-three out of every hundred of the adult population could neither read nor write, only 18 per cent. of the population to-day is in that unhappy state of ignorance, I think I have said enough to show that the system, notwithstanding the enormous obstacles which the religious, political and social quarrels of the country inevitably raised to prevent its full development, has been a great boon to the poorer classes of Ireland.

Of course the enormous increase of late years in the readers of this cheap London periodical literature is not peculiar to Ireland alone. It is common to England, Scotland and Wales as well, and is due, not so much to the difficulty of obtaining books-for the reading of these journals prevails just The Nineteenth Century.

as widely in districts with lending libraries or parish libraries-as to the inability of the half educated or imperfectly trained mind to stand the strain, or to keep up the interest, which the reading of a book-especially an informing book-involves, and to its finding its mental recreation in literary bits and scraps. It is sometimes said that the reading of these journals is neither informing to the mind nor elevating to the character. I hold a different opinion. The one regrettable result which, as it appears to me, the circulation of these periodicals has on the young people of the rural districts of Ireland is to further impress them, by descriptions of scenes of urban life, with the monotony and loneliness of the country as compared with the companionship and varied pleasures of the towns; and thus accelerate that steady diminution of our rural communities which economic causes have for years produced.

Michael MacDonagh.

CHINESE SOCIETY.

Society in the East and West is not an interchangeable term. The entire absence in Asia of what we understand as social intercourse, and the widely differing lines of demarcation between the various ranks, furnish results which have no analogue in the West. Notwithstanding the courtly ceremonials and strict rules of etiquette which are universally current in regions to the east of the Suez Canal, Oriental States are au fond essentially democratic. Notably is this the case in China. It may be said generally that every Chinaman begins life on equal terms with his fellows, and it rests with him to make such use of his op

portunities, whether official, intellectual or commercial, as shall determine the estimation in which he is held by his fellow-countrymen.

Chinese society is traditionally divided into four classes-viz., officials, agriculturalists, mechanics and traders. But as in all other countries in the East, the two classes which practically differentiate the population are officials and non-officials. The power and influence which office supplies answers to all that is known as rank and social status amongst ourselves, and for this reason it is the object of all ambitions. With the exception of a few titles which may be called heredit

ary, every man has in his own hands the carving of his own fortune. The stories in the "Arabian Nights," which describe how men from the lowest dregs of the population rise on occasion to become Grand Viziers, have their parallels every day in China, and countless examples might be given of men who, by their ability and industry have been raised from cottage-life to viceregal thrones. It is a political axiom that the will of the people is the supreme law, and thus we have in China an excellent example of an essentially democratic State.

In piping times of peace the system works smoothly enough, and while it is the ambition of every youth to enter the ranks of the Mandarinate, it is the object of the Mandarins so to rule as not seriously to conflict with the feelings and convictions of the people. At the present time the existing social distinctions are complicated by racial antipathy. Since the assumption of supreme power by the Manchus in the year 1644 there has been a more or less smothered hatred, at times more acute than at others, between themselves and the Chinese. So long as a reasonable proportion of power was given to the Chinese the friction was diminished. But of late the wheels of the Imperial chariot have dragged heavily, and by the injudicious action of the Dowager Empress the antagonism between the two races has become markedly developed. A widely extended cleavage has thus been created within the official class itself, with results which must, unless the provoking cause be removed, prove fatal to the existence of the dynasty.

With some show of reason the Court party trace back the origin of the present disturbed condition of affairs to the arrival of foreigners in the empire. The new ideas, political, historical and scientific, which were introduced into the country by the treaties have, by a

slow and gradual process, opened the eyes of Chinamen to the fact that there are other and more advanced civilizations than their own. The translation of European works into Chinese has placed within the reach of the intellectual classes a vast amount of knowledge which is entirely new to them, and which has created a feeling of dissatisfaction with the political régime under which they live. Then came the Japanese war, with all its humiliations and consequent penal clauses. This added fuel to the fire, the Emperor eagerly adopted suggestions for reform, and, for a time, it seemed as though we were to have repeated in China a similar transformation scene to that by which Japan was converted from the condition of an Oriental feudal State into an advanced monarchy of the newest type.

But the dreams of the reformers were not destined to be realized, at the time at least. With the return of power of the Dowager Empress the reaction set in, and although it is difficult to turn the hands of the clock backwards, that redoubtable old lady did her utmost to accomplish the feat. In this enterprise she was actively supported by the Manchu faction whom she had called to her counsels. Prominent among these men were Kang-i and Jung Lu, both of whom were committed to her cause by her antecedents. It was Kang-i who had induced her to send six of the leading reformers to the scaffold without trial, and it was at his suggestion that a large reward was offered for the apprehension of K'ang Yuwei dead or alive. On Jung Lu she had another hold. When a death warrant had been issued by the Emperor against that officer he threw himself at the feet of the Empress, who extended her protection to him. With these two were associated Prince Ching and Li Hungchang, both of whom were able, if they had been so

minded, to offer more enlightened counsel than their colleagues. Prince Ching had for some time been President of the Tsungli-Yamên and though not advanced in his views was open to reason. Li Hungchang, on the other hand, is an opportunist of the worst kind. He is thoroughly anti-foreign at heart, although he often poses as a liberally-minded statesman. His word is not to be trusted for an instant, and he is in the habit of darkening counsel by his disingenuousness.

The composition of this council boded ill for foreigners, as was quickly demonstrated. An hostility which had till then been confined to words now found expression in deeds. Mission stations were attacked, converts were murdered, and some few foreign mis. sionaries were assassinated, at the same time the visits of the foreign representatives to the Tsungli-Yamên became experiences of greater pain than ever. At the treaty ports the consuls experienced increased difficulty in transacting business with the local authorities on reasonable lines, and found it next to impossible to gain any compensation for wrongs done to their countrymen. These "pin-pricks," however, were not such as to satisfy the animosity of the Empress, who learnt to lean more and more towards the extreme wing of her party. Under the Influence of Kang-i Prince Ching was removed from the Tsungli-Yamên, and Prince Tuan, the father of the heir-apparent to the throne, was appointed in his place. A worse appointment could not have been made, and with the removal of Jung Lu, who had attempted to cool down his Imperial mistress's rancor, to a distance from the court, the power drifted entirely into the hands of the ultra-reactionaries. When matters had reached this condition there came upon the scenes a man who within the last few days has earned for himself indelible infamy. A rebel

lion had some months previously broken out in the province of Kangsu, and a certain General Tung Fuhsiang was sent to suppress it. In this he was successful, and, with his blushing honors fresh upon him, he led his victorious troops to Peking at the bidding of the Empress. Tung was a man after her own heart, truculent, untutored and innately cruel. Accustomed to command, his conduct was hectoring and brutal, and, with a devoted army at his back, he soon shared with Kang-i the mastery of the position. Under the fostering care of these men and with the full approval of the Empress, the Boxers, who had already forced themselves into prominence by their antagonism to everything foreign in Shantung, were developed into a power, and were invited to march on Peking to take their part in the campaign which had been determined upon. The result of this combination of forces is too well known to need recapitulation, and has culminated in the committal of one of the greatest and most unpardonable atrocities of modern times.

It is impossible to regard the action of the Empress and her clique in this matter without loathing and horror, and more especially do these feelings attach to the conduct of the Empress herself. It will be remembered that on two occasions she received in audience the foreign ladies in Peking, and greeted them with embraces and tears; and yet she could find it in her heart to condemn her helpless and unfortunate guests to massacre at the hand of the mob. No sort of extenuation can possibly be pleaded for this outrageous crime, which has shocked the whole civilized world. But she does not stand alone in this condemnation. Apart from her immediate council, there are throughout the provinces many men who have supported the action of the extreme reactionary, even to the length

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